Pandemic inspires new Loveland commercial messaging business

LOVELAND — A vision for information-bearing, self-serve vending machines that sell CBD products around the nation has, thanks to the pandemic, morphed into a new company that expects to deliver information and commercial messages to people in restaurants or waiting rooms in the community.

Plenty Wellness, trade name for C&M Wellness LLC of Loveland, was ready to sign more than a thousand lease contracts to place CBD vending machines in retail establishments around the country. CBD, the abbreviation for cannabidiol, one of the many chemical compounds found in hemp, would be sold from the vending machines. A computer screen on the machines would have delivered informational and advertising messages.

Chris Cox, one of the owners of Plenty Wellness, thought that paid advertising messages would generate a significant amount of the revenue from each machine — maybe $10,000 a month per screen.

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But the pandemic derailed those plans when the businesses hosting the potential locations for the CBD machines either closed or, in the case of home improvement stores, became too busy to deal with another vendor, Cox said.

“We decided to take these screens and deploy them into local businesses. We’ll stream quality content and sell local business advertising onto those screens,” Cox said. He’s begun to place the screens at Loveland businesses over the past couple of weeks and had placed 10 as of Monday.

He plans to place 75 to 100 screens in the next six months.

Businesses that accept the screens receive promotional benefits of having their digital advertising appear on the other screens; software prevents competitive messages from appearing so that one restaurant would not be advertising its competitor’s services.

Cox created a new company, Buzz Screens Media LLC, which was registered with the Secretary of State Feb. 17. 

“We designed our model to be a win-win for us and for our hosts,” he said. A host will receive 5,000 ad placements per month for each screen placed at its business. Nonprofit organizations will receive free placement of content, he said, citing Hearts and Horses as an example.

Number of potential viewers is uncertain; Cox is still working on implementing tracking software. He said Buzz is trying to identify high visibility locations likely to see viewer traffic.

As for the CBD vending machines, Cox has placed a couple in the area and plans to restart that business in the coming months. In the meantime, his retail location for Plenty Wellness continues to operate at 2677 N. Taft Ave. in Loveland.